GREENLAND. 



883 



inhabit), by an intervening tract of land named Ubygd, the " uninhabitable " or 

 " uninhabited." The West Bygd reached from lat. 66° down to 62°, and con- 

 tained, in its best days, ninety farms and four churches. South of it lay the 

 desert, " Ubygd," of seventy geographical miles, terminated by the East Bygd, 

 consisting of 190 farms, and having two towns, Gardar and Alba, one cathedral, 

 and eleven churches. The whole population may probably have amounted to 

 6000 souls. The country was governed by Icelandic laws, and the first of its 

 eighteen bishops, Arnold, was elected in 1121, the last being Endride Andrea- 

 son, who was consecrated in 1406. In spite of its poverty and distance, Green- 

 land was obliged to contribute its mite to the revenues of the Papal chair, for 

 we read in the ancient annalists that in 1326 its tribute, consisting of walrus- 

 teeth, was sold by the Pope's agent, Bertram of Ortolis, to a merchant of Flan- 

 ders for the sum of twelve livres and fourteen sous. 



The time, however, was now fast approaching when the Greenland colony 

 was not only to cease paying tithes and Peter's pence, but to be swept away. 

 During the course of the fourteenth century it was visited by one misfortune 

 after another. The black death, which carried ofO twenty-five millions of Euro- 

 peans, did not spare its distant fjords (1348-9), the Esquimaux harassed the 

 survivors with repeated attacks, killing some, and carrying away others captive. 

 A hostile fleet, suspected to be English, laid waste the country in 1418; and, 

 finally, the revolutions and wars which broke out in Scandinavia after the death 

 of Queen Margaret of Waldemar caused Greenland to be entirely neglected and 

 forgotten. The last colonists either retreated to Iceland, or were destroyed by 

 the Esquimaux, and many years elapsed before Greenland was again thought of 

 as a place where Scandinavians had once been living. At length King Frederick 

 II. of Denmark sent out Mogens Heineson, a famous " sea-cock," as the chroni- 

 clers style him, to the south-eastern coast of Greenland (1581), to see if men of 

 a Norse origin still dwelt along those ice-bound fjords. Heineson reached the 

 coast, but the great transparency of the air, which in the Polar regions frequent- 

 ly causes strange optical delusions, led him into a singular error. After having 

 sailed for many hours in the same direction, and still seeing the mountains which 

 seemed quite near recede as he advanced, he fancied himself fettered by an in- 

 visible power, and thus the famous " sea-cock " returned home with the report 

 that, detained by a magnetic rock, he had not been able to reach the land. 



In 1605 King Christian IV. of Denmark sent out a new Greenland expedi' 

 tion, consisting of three ships, under the command of Godske Lindenow, and 

 the guidance of James Hall, an English pilot. This time no magnetic rocks in- 

 tervened ; but the ships having separated. Hall landed on the west coast, which 

 had already been rediscovered and visited by Davis, Hudson, Baffin, and other 

 Arctic navigators ; while Lindenow, anchoring off Cape Farewell, kidnapped two 

 Esquimaux, who afterwards died of nostalgia in Denmark. But neither Linde- 

 now, who the year after again made his appearance on the western coast of 

 Greenland, nor two later expeditions under Carsten Richardson and Dannell, were 

 able to effect a landing on any part of the eastern coast. It was in sight, but 

 the drift-ice made it inaccessible. They were equally unsuccessful in finding 

 any traces of the lost colony, which came at length to be regarded as a mere 



